Blues: Clara Smith, "Don't Advertise Your Man," 1924

Today's song continues a most enjoyable sidetrip that began with Robert Palmer's Deep Blues and continues with an exploration of musicians included on the 1978 New World Records release, Let’s Get Loose: Folk and Popular Blues Styles from the Beginnings to the Early 1940s. Clara Smith (1894-1935) sings "Don't Advertise Your Man," a song I first heard in a different version on Bonnie Raitt's debut album, there entitled "Women Be Wise." Whether she got it from Sippie Wallace or Clara Smith, Raitt recorded a number of songs in the Seventies from earlier blueswomen, and her straight-up blues albums have endured nicely, not least of all because of her masterful bottle-neck guitar playing. Now here is the song, recorded in 1924. "Don't be a nut./ Keep your mouth shut./ Don't advertise your man."

From Scott Yanow's biographical note on the allmusic.com site:

"She began working on the theatre circuit and in vaudeville around 1910, learning her craft during the next 13 years while traveling throughout the South. In 1923 Clara Smith came to New York and she recorded steadily for Columbia through 1932, cutting 122 songs often with the backing of top musicians (especially after 1925) including Louis Armstrong, Charlie Green, Joe Smith, Freddy Jenkins and James P. Johnson (in 1929). Plus she recorded two vocal duets with Bessie Smith Bessie and four with Lonnie Johnson. She was billed as the 'Queen of the Moaners' although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors. She performed throughout the country (even appearing on the West Coast during 1924-25) and in Harlem revues during her prime years."

Carl Van Vechten described Smith's style in a March, 1926 Vanity Fair article (quoted on the liner notes of Let's Get Loose).

"Her voice flutters agonizingly between tones. Music critics would say that she sings off the key. What she really does, of course, is to sing quarter tones. Thus she is justifiably billed as the 'World's greatest moaner.'....As she comes upon the stage through folds of electric blue hangings at the back, she is wrapped in a black evening cloak bordered with white fur. She does not advance, but hesitates, turning her face in profile. The pianist is playing the characteristic strain of the Blues. Clara begins to sing. . . . Her tones become poignantly pathetic; tears roll down her cheeks. . . . Her voice dies away in a mournful wail of pain and she buries her head in the curtains.... Clara Smith's tones uncannily take on the colour of the saxophone; again of the clarinet. Her voice is powerful or melancholy, by turn. It tears the blood from one's heart".

For a complete Clara Smith discography, see her page at The Red Hot Jazz Archive. Subscribers to Spotify will find six albums of her recordings, covering 1923-1932, plus an alternate compilation album in the "Best of the Blues" series. I have been listening to these tracks and agree with the plaudits of those who compare her to Bessie Smith. Clara Smith was a great blues singer who deserves to be remembered today.